


Blood & Hellfire

by vvivid



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Apocalypse, Attempts at being poetic lol, Character Death, Dark, Dark Crack, Darkest Timeline, Haruno Sakura Has Issues, Haruno Sakura-centric, Kinda, Non-Graphic Violence, October Prompt Challenge, Run-On Sentences, Short One Shot, THIS IS SO DRAMATIC, Technically lol, Tumblr Prompt, Unreliable Narrator, abuse of punctuation, buckle up for this one, oh boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26825863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vvivid/pseuds/vvivid
Summary: The fight between Sasuke and Naruto at the valley ends differently.Prompt: "You did this?"
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67





	Blood & Hellfire

**Author's Note:**

> i can't dedicate to a full month of writing, so i'll settle for doing little prompts here and there. that being said, i'd like to try my hand at requests. they will be short-ish one shots, featuring basically anything. if you like what i write, and want to see something specific, let me know!
> 
> anyways......................... have fun!

War changes people, but not them—unyielding, burning, passionate. They fight until there is no more, until the abyss swallows them both whole.

Even after a goddess rises and falls, they fight like their life depends on it.  _ But it doesn’t _ , she wants to say, to scream it at the top of her lungs; instead, she watches them tear each other apart. Ruthless, intense, certain. One way or another, their words, feelings, everything, will reach each other at last.

It ends bloody and boneless, two corpses in place of friends. Sakura is inconsolable. She weeps over their bodies as Kakashi tries to gently pull her away. She hasn’t cried this much in years, but like a broken dam she is unable to stop. All the pain, loneliness, and desperation bubble up inside her like a volcano and erupts unendingly.

Finally, Kakashi manages to take her back home.  _ It is not the same _ .

She spends hours just walking, wandering the village with a hollow heart. Sometimes, she disappears for days, but always returns.

Until she doesn’t.

A broken girl leaves the village on a sunny day, the shadows of the trees lining their home swallowing her up. She leaves behind everything (and nothing). They try to search for her, but it is clear she doesn’t want to be found; many presume  she's dead. Suicide.

Sakura is strong, though; she also knows that Naruto would be devasted if she did it. So, she doesn’t, as a sick honor to his memory. It's hypocritical, she laughs, that even now she has the  decency to show respect to him—a ghost. If he loved her like he said he did, he would've never left her. He  would've found another way.

That’s just wishful thinking, and she knows it. Deep down, she knows that Naruto did all he could. She knows it’s not his fault, and as much as she wants to blame his  counterpart , it is not Sasuke’s fault either.

They were not born with the burden they  carried, the pain etched into their hearts: they were created. Created because of a failed, corrupted system. It disgusts her, and she  can't find it in herself to serve such a rotting place. That is why she leaves.

She has no place to go. No family, friends, or anything in between—she has left whatever she had behind. She’s alone, but then again, she thinks it's been like this for a while; since they left in the beginning. Is it really any different now?

Sakura spends weeks (months?) pondering. She questions everything ever laid in front of her, anything she has ever seen or read, and everything else past it. She wonders what she’s supposed to do now. Where does she go from here?

Sakura was not born to fight: an unknown civilian child to an unknown civilian family. They had no  expectations for her. Formless, an invisible body on the back of the field. Nameless. Faceless. Someone to be forgotten.

But she is strong, and she knows it: she  worked herself to the point of perfection, honing what skills she had.

As Sakura watches the sunset from atop a familiar valley, she feels something awaken inside her. A purpose—perhaps, a destiny. Naruto and Sasuke would strive to make things better, somehow, each with their own warped ideologies. She can do what they couldn’t. What they can never do now. 

So she fights in their honor, a parody of their self-righteousness mirrored on her skin; a breathy promise to never surrender. Sakura takes an aspect from each of them, molding it into herself to ascend past herself.

Sakura rampages: day in, day out.

With each day, she feels herself give just a little bit more up. Fleeting, pesky emotions that bind her to her own humanity. Guilt, hurt, sadness;  it's all eaten away by the growing need to  _ devour _ .

She comes and goes as she pleases, flattening mountains and laying siege to everything else. She can feel herself becoming unhinged, but it feels good. Amazing. Freeing.

It's easy to give in, letting her rage swallow everything else.

There are others stronger than her, sure. Those bred from powerful clans to be crafted into the perfect warrior—but she is vicious and ruthless, bloodthirsty and unstoppable. She has nothing to lose and nothing to gain. They will fall to her, just like the many others before them.

Always underestimated, always the one in last, but not anymore. She wears the blood of others like silk, her scars jewels that litter her body; a false crown fashioned from their flesh and fears; a queen situated atop a throne of ash and bone.

Time means nothing to her. She sees many days and countless nights, sleeping whenever she can. In the beginning, she was plagued by night terrors, visions of what was and what is to be. Now, there is nothing. Darkness. She sleeps like the dead. 

Worn and scarred, with dull pink hair that has grown past her shoulders from the days (years?); a small joy in life to feel it whip around her freely,  _ mockingly _ , daring someone to get close enough to take hold of it.

Sakura is smart enough to not directly take on villages. However, that doesn’t stop her from annihilating every single  patrol she comes across, no matter their  allegiance . 

Some battles leave her broken and bloody beyond recognition, but she is always the last one standing. They can tear her limb from limb, burn her alive, torture her for hours, but she will not break. Her yin seal keeps her – their – dream alive, and she fights until it is just her.

_ Alone, surrounded by corpses. _

Carnage, unending war. When the goddess fell, they all believed it to be over, but they were wrong: it was only the beginning. She is brutal and they are unsuspecting, falling to her delicate hands that have long since shaken when she hears (feels) their necks snapping.

The rabbit goddess was powerful, but Sakura is vengeful. Full of hate and anguish, her only reason for breathing or moving is to devastate the land she has scorned. 

She thought to spare a few, for they have done her no wrong: it seems curler to let them live, though, and in that aspect she is merciful.  _ Go in peace _ , a whisper echoes;  _ be free from this hell I am creating _ .

The closest she feels to human is when she faces Kakashi. Sakura is unrecognizable, a phantom of her former self; an  anomaly , for she looks identical, but he doesn’t know the woman before him.

Bodies lay about, mauled. Its gruesome, disgusting. Even to him, who has seen so much—he looks at her like he is seeing her for the first time, and he can't contain his emotions when he addresses her.

“You did this?”

Does he even speak? His words seem to fall into silence, his tongue burning. Sakura looks at him; she seems tired and frail, despite the fresh blood dripping from her fingertips.

“I’m so tired,” she confesses, and for a moment she looks young again. He sees her small, lovestruck  genin self, sees her looking to him for help.

“I know,” he tells her, soothes her. For the first time in years (months? Weeks?), she breaks down. She cries freely, wailing as loud as her lungs will let her.

And he comforts her, holds her as she crumbles in his arms. It is the only thing he can give her now, the only sense of relief--

Before he strikes her down. He tells himself that she will be free afterwards, no longer burdened. No longer angry or tired.  It's not a fitting end, but it is the best he can give her. She deserves something much worse, a death worthy of someone who has murdered thousands.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into her temple, but that doesn’t stop her sobs. In a moment, a flash, its over; her hands are on his neck, snapped, and she wails ever louder.

Sakura mourns one of the last people she cared about, another betrayal. In the morning, she is filled with something besides fury: she is filled with hopelessness.

And yet, she feels the last of her restraint surrender; in a sick and twisted way, she feels a weight off her shoulders. It's almost paradoxical.

Sakura returns to the war she has waged, bathes in the bloodshed she brought forth, and fights.

She was not born, no, but created; a menace that seeks only destruction and ruin, warping into what they very sought to destroy. As one goddess falls, another rises.

Sakura fights until she is overwhelmed, chakra exhausted with an empty seal on her forehead. Unknown shinobi strike her down mercilessly, and she dies.

Alone, to face enemies, surrounded by the very scorched earth she has ravaged. In her last moments, she laughs the best she can  through the blood gathering in her throat. In the end, she wins. She always wins. She tore down the very foundations of this world, leaving nothing in her wake.

No one will tell her story, for there is no one left. There is no legacy, no promise, no future.

She long ago forgot why she ever began this, her boys a blurred memory tucked underneath her sins. She buried them long ago, on the day she watched them fall to each other. She put them where her corruption could never reach, but in doing so, she too abandoned them. Their hopes, dreams—their love.

Sakura dies alone, not even a memory, but she dies a god.

**Author's Note:**

> lol
> 
> some personal notes: i'm sorry but, i just couldn't include tsunade in this. it made me legit sad to write about sakura hurting her so i glossed over it. clearly, this is pretty high level crack au, so please don't treat it TOO seriously. either way, i hope you guys enjoyed (???) it, i super appreciate any kudos/comments/etc
> 
> i love you


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